|
|
Bulletin Board
Frozen Four Notes
- Attending my third Frozen Four in nine years. This year I’m sitting less than 10 feet from Barry Melrose and the rest of the ESPN crew, who are seated at center ice on the first level on a platform built for the telecast. But I’m still a rookie. One guy I talked to from Boston is at his 14th consecutive Frozen Four.
- Explaining my interest in NCAA hockey, there are 25 USHL alumni in tonight’s title game, including three from the Sioux Falls Stampede. All together, there were 58 USHL alumni on the four teams, eight from the Stampede.
- The Frozen Four can be expensive and I’m not just talking souvenir prices (a long sleeve tee and cap being mandatory purchases). The 40+ hour interval between the semifinals and the championship game leaves far too much time to wander bookstores in the Twin Cities, meaning I’ll be going home with at least 10 books more than I arrived with (the trip isn’t over yet).
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
My teeth weren’t that good to begin with, so hopefully I can get some better ones.
Chicago Blackhawks defenseman Duncan Keith
after losing seven teeth to a hockey puck in May 2010
Imagine the proverbial search for the needle in the haystack. Fortunately, anyone searching knows what a needle is. Multiply the strands of hay billions of times and you’re approaching one of the haystacks in which those in search of extraterrestrial life are working. Yet their effort struggles with a fundamental question: How do you define “life”? As science journalist Marc Kaufman points out in a new book, the answer is not as easy as it might seem. More important, the definition ultimately arrived at could mean we already have proof that life exists beyond Earth.
 To say that Kaufman’s book, First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth, surveys a huge range of possible haystacks is an understatement. He takes us from beneath the surface of our planet, where scientists hunt for and study “extremophile” microbes that alter our views of what is necessary for life to exist, to observatories and labs searching deep space for extraterrestrial signals or exoplanets, planets outside the solar system. Not only does the book suggest the breadth of the effort, it reveals how each aspect reveals ideas and science never before suspected.
For example, there is the question of what Kaufman calls “a possible shadow biosphere.” Is there life on Earth that was not previously considered life? First Contact takes us to research at an alkaline lake in California that led NASA to announce in December 2010 the discovery of an organism that uses arsenic in its cellular structure, an element that is not one of the six essential elements necessary for life on Earth. If terrestrial “life” can be arsenic-based and extremophiles can exist in circumstances previously thought incapable of supporting life, it becomes that much more likely that life exists off the planet,
In exploring these investigations and their ramifications, Kaufman does what excellent science reporters do — he translates at times difficult concepts into language those of us who barely passed “Bonehead Chemistry” can understand. This is no small feat, given that Kaufman himself was new to the field of astrobiology and, as he puts it, some of those involved in the effort use “a language that can often seem mysterious and impregnable.” Perhaps due to the need to keep the information as accessible as possible, Kaufman tends to a bit of repetition. That is a relatively minor flaw in light of his approach. Whether descending into the South African mines, visiting observatories in Australia or going to California’s Mono Lake, First Contact also introduces the reader to the scientists. Readers aren’t left with the science and what the scientists are studying. Kaufman, science writer and national editor at The Washington Post, also personalizes the researchers and their work.
This also enables readers to better grasp some of the ongoing debates about whether we have already discovered extraterrestrial life. First Contact reviews the questions surrounding whether Mars landers found evidence of life on that planet. Kaufman updates the ongoing debate that began some 15 years ago when scientists suggested their study of a meteorite from Mars contained microfossils of primitive bacteria. He also explores the scientific studies going on beyond Earth, Mars and the solar system. He explains how scientists search for exoplanets and how older instruments utilize new technology and computing power to crunch massive amounts of data to plot one or two points. Even long-recognized efforts introduce debates. Thus, when SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence using radio telescopes, makes an appearance, Kaufman introduces readers to the question of whether it is wise for us to broadcast or announce our presence to possible extraterrestrial intelligence.
Even if we don’t reach a universal definition of life first, Kaufman suggests we may be on the cusp of one of the greatest “Eureka!” moments in human history. Given how how broad-based the search for extraterrestrial life has become, the fundamental question may become what its discovery means for human society.
Making life from nonlife has turned out to be extraordinarily hard.
Mark Kaufman, First Contact
My idea of the ideal vacation? Oceanfront on the Pacific or Caribbean, sun and plenty of cold drinks and reading material. A hammock is always an exquisite addition. What did Kevin Grange do in 2007? He embarked on what is billed as the toughest trek in the world, a 24-day horseshoe-shaped journey of 216 miles on foot through the Himalayan Mountains in Bhutan.
 Granted, Grange and his fellow trekkers were accompanied by a seven-person support team, a kitchen tent and toilet tents and were served hot tea upon arising each morning and hot evening meals with silverware at a large table. Still, the trek is a daunting challenge. Not only are trekkers hiking nearly 10 miles a day, they traverse 11 high-mountain passes, seven over 16,000 feet. In addition to the risks inherent on at times precarious trails and from unpredictable weather, the height of the mountain passes makes altitude sickness a very real — and potentially fatal — danger. More people have climbed Mount Everest than have completed the Snowman Trek. Fewer than 120 people a year attempt the trek; less than 50 percent finish. Or, as one of Grange’s fellow trekkers put it, “Everybody cries at some point on the Snowman Trek.”
Were Beneath Blossom Rain: Discovering Bhutan on the Toughest Trek in the World, Grange’s account of his journey, limited to its hazards, trials and tribulations, one could easily categorize it as an adventure travel tale for those who enjoy such reads. Fortunately. Grange’s scope and journey were far broader. He does a fine job of showing readers the nature, history and landscape of Bhutan, as well as taking us to remote villages and monasteries (including an encounter with a “shit-faced” shaman who is plainly intoxicated when he comes to bless the group in a remote village). He is equally open about what is essentially a personal search for meaning.
As such, Beneath Blossom Rain combines the best of two other recently released works. Noted travel author Colin Thubron’s To a Mountain in Tibet is somewhat more heavily philosophical account of his pilgrimage trek from Nepal to a Himalayan mountain in remote western Tibet. A search for meaning and an account of life in Bhutan, a country that actually measures Gross National Happiness and limits the number of tourists, is the focus of Lisa Napoli’s Radio Shangri-La: What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth. Napoli’s story, though, is set in Bhutan’s capital and largest city, not Himalayan treks.
Two concepts help drive Grange on the trek. One is the western idea of Shangri-La. A friend who completed the Snowman Trek described a high-altitude village in a valley in remotest northern Bhutan as “the most beautiful, most mysterious and most otherworldly place I’ve ever been.” It becomes Grange’s personal idea of Shangri-La and motivates him along the trek. The other is a Tibetan and Bhutanese concept that inspired the book’s title. In local folklore, an auspicious superstition surrounds blossom rain, the moment of rainbow light when it is raining and sunny at the same time. Bhutanese he asks about blossom rain provide no better than enigmatic answers about its significance and his desire to grasp the concept also animates his efforts. Beneath Blossom Rain becomes as much a journal of an internal trek as a Himalayan one, a tale in which we are even privy to Grange’s ongoing debate with his “inner critic.” We also learn with Grange that enlightenment may not always come in places or events we would suspect.
Grange occasionally falls into a few clichés (“like home, sleep felt far away”) and platitudes (“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”). Additionally, some of the conversations with his fellow trekkers and guides seem somewhat artificial, designed more to convey basic information to the reader that someone on the trek would already know. Still, Grange brings a light touch of humor and direct, conversational tone that outweighs these occasional foibles. More important, Beneath Blossom Rain succeeds in merging travelogue with personal contemplation, allowing the armchair traveler to share both the physical and personal journey and taking them beyond a geographic place to a more philosophical one.
When a guidebook recommends where you can safely stash a teammate who unfortunately “expires,” it’s never a good thing
Kevin Grange, Beneath Blossom Rain
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% (“The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had.”) (via)
Blog Headline of the Week
Bookish Linkage
- I wonder what Anis Shivani really thinks about the NYT Book Review? A couple excerpts from his post this week:
- “If American literary culture is in serious trouble–reflecting the perverted groupthink of empire’s intellectuals in the last stage of decadence–then a sure barometer is the unmitigated trash one finds without fail on the Times‘s book review pages.”
- “…we are talking about a pervasive corruption, an intellectual deceit that what is being offered is an honest assessment of the wide range of books being published in America, when what is being delivered is the narrowest spectrum of opinions about the narrowest spectrum of books one can imagine slicing off from the main body of publishing.”
- Not the 50 books you must read before you die
Nonbookish Linkage
Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
Saul Alinksy, Rules for Radicals
Massachusetts woman awarded workers’ compensation benefits for workplace harassment that included telling her she would get health insurance only if she agreed to wear a chicken head mask.
A California woman convicted of forging drug prescriptions showed up at her sentencing hearing with a note from her doctor that was … wait for it .. forged. (via).
Terrorist or “a kind of Forrest Gump in the war against al Qaeda“?
Virginia judge sues newspaper for defamation — for article on defamation trial the newspaper lost in the judge’s court.
President Receives Transparency Award in Closed Meeting
It is not a good sign for a lawyer when the appeals court decision in your case says you are “a menace to [your] clients and a scofflaw.”
A Florida man on trial for rape was ordered to wear a spit guard for the balance of trial after “spitting on his own attorney after a discussion about his legal rights.”
Excuse me, sir, but you may have a problem (in more ways than one): Man Brings Beer to DWI Court Appearance (via)
Justice limps along, but it gets there all the same.
Gabriel García Márquez, In Evil Hour
|
Disclaimer 
Additionally, some links on this blog go to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. There is no additional cost to you. Contact me You can e-mail me at prairieprogressive at gmaildotcom.
|
